Justice for Gordon Brown is an ad
hoc Campaign,

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donations

This
pamphlet was written jointly by Gordon Brown and Laurie Flynn. Flynn first
met Gordon Brown, the Glasgow-born whistleblower, while investigating
De Beers’ mining practices for Granada Television’s World
in Action programme in 1986. Since its foundation just over
a century ago De Beers has become one of the most controversial business
enterprises in the world. Its business practices in wartime, its use of
migrant labour and discriminatory labour practices, its dalliance with
apartheid, its clashes with American competition authorities and the United
Nations have all been the subject of high controversy. In 2004 De Beers
was given a formal criminal conviction in the United States for conspiracy
to violate competition law and fined $10 million. In November 2005 the
group agreed to pay $295 million to settle price fixing and restraint
of trade law suits brought in law courts in Arizona, San Francisco and
Trenton, New Jersey.

Whatever its problems in America, De Beers’ fortunes are closely tied
in with the highly political economy of diamonds in sub-Saharan Africa
and with Botswana, South Africa and Namibia in particular. This pamphlet
focuses on extraordinary events in the last of these countries. Occupied
illegally for decades by apartheid South Africa and with the world’s finest
deposits of gem diamonds, Namibia was the building block with which De
Beers and its sister company Anglo American assembled the greatest treasure
trove of assets in the world of mining. According to statements in the
press and on their website Anglo and De Beers are very keen to distance
themselves from a troubled past and will henceforth ‘always listen first
and then act with openness, honesty and integrity so that our relationships
flourish.’ If Gordon Brown’s experience is anything to go by the Anglo/De
Beers commitment to integrity and law abiding behaviour has some considerable
way to go. The way he has been treated is unconscionable and he calls
out for justice and an end to the persistent violations of his human rights.